The boards of two Dublin hospitals have expressed serious concern at the decision to site the State's new children's hospital on the campus of the Mater hospital and have called for an independent review. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
The boards of St James's Hospital and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin have written to Minister for Health Mary Harney, ahead of today's Cabinet meeting at which the decision is down for approval, saying they cannot support it.
The decision was made by a taskforce representative of the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Department of Health and the OPW, and was endorsed by the board of the HSE last week.
St James's, in its letter to the Minister, described the process by which the taskforce came to its final decision as "fatally flawed". The deputy chairman of the board of Crumlin hospital, Frank Feely, in his letter, described the report of the taskforce on how it came to its decision as "extremely short on detail and transparency".
St James's letter is accompanied by a memo which refers to the decision as "unsafe" and says it has the potential "to seriously undermine the delivery of optimum care to children".
It suggests the absence of a paediatrician or senior hospital doctor from the taskforce may explain the "serious flaws".
The St James's letter said there seemed to be no in-depth analysis of two particular criteria before a site was chosen, namely the capacity of the sites and "the depth and breadth of the clinical and academic supports" that would be available to a new hospital located on campus.
In the end the decision came down to either St James's or the Mater sites, and St James's said its site was almost four times as big as the Mater's.
However, the other criteria in relation to depth and breadth of services was, it said, "arguably the most critical since the whole concept of co-location is founded on the widely-held international view that the best quality of care for children is provided where there is the greatest range of specialties available in a co-located adult hospital".
St James's board noted that the taskforce's report said it could not distinguish between the two hospitals in regard to this criterion, not because the evidence suggested parity, but because the detailed evidence base for such a distinction was not available to it.
"Surely in that case it had a duty to . . . engage expert help to conduct a more detailed study. Its failure to do so is inexplicable and vitiates the entire process."
Its letter also said it seemed the taskforce "settled on a hypothesis that the Mater could build more quickly than St James's and was better situated to develop cross-site co-operation with other tertiary hospitals. These assumptions were unsupported by any detailed investigation or reliable evidence."
It said the board of the hospital believed it would be "irresponsible to accept without further review the outcome of the process". It requested an international expert peer review of the decision and suggested this could be done within four weeks.
Crumlin hospital, in its letter, said it felt strongly the decision to provide the new hospital "should not in any way be compromised by using the speed of project delivery as the sole differentiating factor between the two sites finally considered".
The taskforce favoured the Mater site because work had already been done on that site in preparation for Temple Street to be relocated there.
The letter from Crumlin also said its board was "concerned that a final decision could be taken which appears to have been based on an incomplete and superficial analysis of only some of the criteria".
All three children's hospitals in Dublin will be merged into the new hospital and behind the scenes there are concerns that the decision to site the new hospital at the Mater was a political one given that the Mater is in the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's constituency.
Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell said he hoped the hospitals' concerns "will not fall on deaf ears". The selection of the Mater Hospital was "completely baffling" when there was a 24 hectare site available at St. James' Hospital.
Tallaght hospital is also disappointed with the decision and has yet to uissue a statement.